


The Brew Pub

by cinder1013



Category: Daredevil (TV), Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mob City, The X-Files
Genre: Blink and you'll miss it Methos cameo, Foodies, Hardison makes ridiculous kinds of beer', M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19042456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinder1013/pseuds/cinder1013
Summary: Joe Teague is out of jail and needs a job, which Eliot provides. At the Brew Pub he meets some interesting characters, including an old friend from WWII.





	The Brew Pub

**Author's Note:**

> OK, I’m playing with time here. Joe is old. I assume here that Joe was charged with the murder and went to prison. He’s just gotten out of prison for killing Bugsy Siegel. This happens about a year after Winter Soldier, so let’s assume Joe was very young in WWII and he’s about 85 now. He still has to work because he never built up enough Social Security and because it helps him not think. Still, he’s a very fit 85. 
> 
> In the MCU timeline this happens instead of everything after Winter Soldier. I guess. That sounds about right.

He’d been looking for work for a while now. Murder was generally a long rap, but he’d served his time and now he needed a job. He’d work at a place for a few weeks, then someone would find out what he’d gone to prison for and decide he should move on. 

Slowly he moved up the coast until he got to Portland. There was a _Help Wanted_ sign in the window of a restaurant and he knew he could wash dishes so he walked in and applied, accepting an application from the rather sweet waitress there. 

The guy who walked out of the kitchen to interview him didn’t walk like a cook — well, unless that cook served in the marines as a sniper. With a glance, he sized Joe up, then shoved aside his application without reading it. 

“You tend bar?” he asked. 

“A few times,” Joe told him. He offered his hand. “Name’s Joe.” 

The guy shook with a firm grip. “Eliot.” He stepped about half a step back. “You served time in San Quentin?” 

“How’d you know that?” 

“Guys who serve time there, it’s a distinctive walk. What’d you do?” 

Joe sighed. Might as well tell him. “Murder.” 

“Was it justified?” 

Joe blinked. He’d never been asked that before. “Yeah. He was going to kill my girl.” 

“Who? Just out of curiosity.” 

“Bugsy Siegel.” 

Eliot swallowed just a bit and obviously filed it in his brain. Uncrossing his arms, he asked, “and you were a Marine?” 

“They got a distinctive walk too?” 

“Something like that.” 

“Yeah, I served in the Pacific.” 

Eliot nodded. “Awesome, sir. Come back behind the bar?” 

Joe did so. “You don’t have to call me sir.” 

“Of course not, sir.” Eliot pulled out three glasses, a shot glass, a pint glass, and something kinda fancy looking. “Pour a shot, a Guinness, and make me a Sidecar.” 

With a shrug, Joe started with the Guinness because it would take longest, letting it rest between pours so the head would be small. Then he made a Sidecar. He hadn’t made one since at least the 40’s, but he still knew it. Still could feel it in his hands, the way he would make it for Jasmine. And he finished with the shot, Jameson, before topping off the Guinness and using a knife to slice off the extra head. 

“Jameson? Catholic?” 

“Without the guilt,” Joe told him with just a bit of a smile. It crinkled his weathered face. 

Eliot gave him a cheers before doing the shot. “Nicely poured.” Then he tried the Sidecar. “Well made. Old recipe though. They make it with Cognac now, rather than Brandy, but I like this. I think maybe we should make it this way.” Putting that down, he lifted the Guinness glass and evaluated it. “Could have poured this more slowly.” 

“Hard when you’re standing there.” 

“I hear that, sir.” Eliot put the beer down. “You’re hired.” 

“You sure?” 

“Very. You’re working the lunch shift. Come in at 10am tomorrow. You’ll be prepping the bar and whatever else needs doing before we open for lunch.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Sir, I’m the one who calls you sir.” Eliot offered his hand and Joe grabbed it by the forearm, knowing he was pledging his loyalty. Eliot actually smiled.

He knew Eliot wasn’t just a guy who owned a pub, but he didn’t figure for quite how weird the situation he was getting himself into was. 

The next day he came in and found a stool behind the bar. A black guy with a wide smile and a pleasant demeanor stood there. “Hi, I’m HR and stuff. Let’s make sure we can get you paid and all.” He escorted Joe into the back room and took his info. When Joe informed him he didn’t have a bank account, Hardison (his name was) arranged for him to open one at a good bank with no fees called Parker Holdings. 

“I know you’ll be going a bit out of your way, but trust me, this is the bank for you.” 

Joe wasn’t sure what to think, but it had high yields and seemed like a nice place. 

The stool stayed. Eliot considered it cruel to make people stand all the time. Also, he showed him, “This knife” he pulled a knife from beneath the bar “is a Santoku. It’s for cutting limes and lemons and such.” He slide it back into the holder that had been affixed to the underside of the bar. “This knife” he pulled out a black bladed ka-bar “is for defending the bar. OK?”

“I’m an old man and I’m more comfortable with a shotgun.” 

“I don’t like guns.” 

“I understand.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

The gastropub was a little weird for him. Hardison had finally learned how to make drinkable beers, although Eliot still groused about several of them.

* * *

“Really, Harrison? Gingerbread?” 

“It’s the holidays.”

“I refuse to serve this. I refuse to even believe it exists.” 

“Ooo, look, the gingerbread has got Eliot afraid.” 

“Fuck you, man.”

* * *

but the food perplexed him at first. After eating prison food for so many years, he wasn’t sure what to make of baked quail with a garlic gastrique or avocado sauce zucchini pasta with grilled sea bass. (He wasn’t even sure what sea bass was.)

* * *

“You should do a foam, man.”

“I. Don’t. Do. Foam.

* * *

Apparently both went well with the blonde cider beer Hardison created, now that he’d studied and was actually working on his Brewmaster. Joe liked both, much to his amazement. San Quentin really hadn’t prepared his pallette for this, but Eliot was determined to help him find new tastes and experiences. As Parker said, Eliot took food and people very seriously. 

“Everyone can learn,” Eliot told him. “Don’t ever let anyone try to feed you that shit, sir.” 

His second day, Eliot pulled him aside and told him, “I’m expecting someone to come in today who needs help. You’ll know when you see her. Just come get me.” 

Joe nodded. 

Sure enough, a little after noon, a young lady with a furtive look arrived. She reminded him a bit of Jasmine, even if she looked nothing like her. “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asked. He carefully slid a menu across to her, slow with movement in case she needed space. 

“I ... I was told to come here,” she said. 

“You’re looking for the guy in the back?” 

“I think so?” 

“Well, I recommend the lime-cilantro marinated skirt steak tacos with the lime arranchi and pigeon pea mash. And I can get you shot with that.” 

She smiled so gratefully. “I just need a Diet Coke, but I’ll enjoy that, thanks.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” He got her a Diet Coke with a slice of the nice Persian lime they had right now and then went in the back to let Eliot know she’d arrived and she wanted tacos. 

Eliot laughed. “Everyone suddenly wants tacos. Lunch?” 

“I wouldn’t object.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

That lunch was the first time Joe met Parker. She arrived in a whirlwind with Hardison strolling up behind her. “Hi, you’re Joe?” she asked. “And that’s...” she made a gesture at the woman at the other end of the bar. Hardison nodded at him over Parker’s head. 

“Um, yes.” 

“Great and great to meet you, Joe. They’ve been telling me I’d scare you, but I’ve really wanted to meet you because you look so nice, especially for a murderer.” 

“Not much scares me, ma’am.” 

Parker smiled so wide it threatened to split her face. “He called me ma’am,” she told Hardison. 

“Let’s go talk to the client,” he told her. They met with the client and then took her to one of the tables by the windows. Eliot joined them soon, bringing tacos for everyone, but not before stopping off at the bar to give Joe a serving. 

After that, they were all gone for a couple days. They returned in what Joe judged to be good spirits, so all must have gone well.

* * *

“What are you sulking about?” 

“Lucille VI, man. Really?” 

“Here, chocolate cake.”

“You can do better than that, man.” Hardison smirked.

Eliot glanced around the quiet pub. It was about 3 o’clock. “Fine, let’s go in ... the back?” 

Hardison’s smirk got even wider. They left together.

* * *

Whatever that was, it seemed to have been a test, because when they got back, Eliot arranged for someone else to run the bar for a bit so he could have lunch with Joe. They ate the fried chicken with wild mushroom gravy and sweet potato and chive drop biscuits this time. Hardison joined them, bearing a new beer that seemed to go quite well, an amber ale aged in whiskey barrels. Joe couldn’t complain even if they were Protestant barrels. 

“Look,” Eliot told him, “we help people. It’s what we do. We’ve been doing it for several years now, Hardison, Parker, and I. So, you’ll have people come in looking for help. Always go through me. Do you understand? They can’t protect themselves the way you and I can.” 

“Got it.”

“Sometimes people will come in looking for us. Again, all requests go through me.” 

“Got it.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

After that, it was a regular thing. People would come in looking for help. Joe made sure they got food and access to Eliot, even though it was Parker that would usually come out to meet them. 

People would come by to see Eliot and the others ... people who were also dangerous. Sometimes they seemed to be friends and sometimes not. He had orders to charge someone named Chaos double. Chaos? Joe shook his head at that and made sure the ka-bar was secure. 

Parker started to come by a bit after lunchtime to sit at the bar and listen to him tell stories. She’d tell a few of her own, but she didn’t reveal much. Joe got the impression that was because she didn’t think her stories were that special rather than her being reticent. He liked her a lot and got the impression the two young men did as well, if the way they hugged her was any indication. They liked each other a lot too, if they way they kissed was any indication — sweet, briefly, on the mouth, like a couple who’d been doing this a while. It was nice, comfortable. The world had come a long way from furtive experiences in foxholes. Joe felt pretty good about that. After all, this is what the freedom he’d fought for should mean. 

And sometimes truly dangerous people came to the bar and Joe wasn’t always sure what they wanted. The lady in red carried herself with the grace of flame. Her black hair was braided with a heavy weight at the end that Joe assumed could do damage with a whip of her head. Her dress was always red and impeccable, slinky, obviously easy to move in, but also stylish with an asymmetrical collar and a sleeve teasingly falling off one shoulder. Her arms were a thing of toned beauty. She wore flats.

The one-armed Russian guy, with eyes still innocent and young, even if Joe knew he’d likely seen too much, drank too much vodka and consistently forgot to pay for it. Eliot laughed when Joe mentioned it. 

“Don’t worry, sir. He has a tab.” 

Joe held up the piece of paper that said something in what he presumed was Russian. Eliot just laughed harder, but he wouldn’t tell Joe why. 

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/181820539@N08/47973699378/in/dateposted-friend/)

One guy, an enigmatic individual, unassuming, but with old eyes, would come in and toss his bottle caps behind the bar ... or he would until Joe threatened, “Do that again and I will stab you.” 

“That would be inconvenient,” the man told him mildly, a sweet smirk on his face, and he didn’t do it after that. Joe assumed it was some kind of test. He was the only one who never called Joe sir, like he was older or something, even though he didn’t look a day over 30.

Sometimes someone came in and asked for Eliot, Parker, or Hardison specifically. Joe wasn’t stupid. He put the requests directly to Eliot. Usually Eliot would come out, chat for a moment, and then take them in the back. The real back, not the kitchen or the office Hardison used. Joe didn’t ask about the back. It wasn’t his business. 

Not much surprised him at this point, but the man with the metal arm did. Shocked was more like it. He stopped in his tracks while wiping a glass, his eyes wide. Before he’d been shipped off to the pacific, he’d had a rather nice weekend in Europe at a USO thing. That’s where he’d met a gregarious young man with an easy smile. “Bucky?” 

“Oh, uh, hi?” 

“It’s Joe. Do you remember me? We knew one another during the war. Just for a little bit, maybe not even a day, but yeah. How, exactly, have you not aged?” He was waiting to be told, _oh, that was my dad,_ even though was fairly sure it wasn’t. It was a distinctive smile. 

Bucky shrugged. “Russians.” 

Helpless to do anything else, Joe took that as an answer and got Bucky a shot of whiskey. “Bastards.” He poured himself a shot too and they toasted to that. “So, lunch?” 

Bucky had the Truffle Mac and Cheese with Brussel Sprout slaw and a paired chocolate stout. They didn’t talk much, but Bucky came back again the next day.

* * *

“Chocolate stout? Are you trying to kill me, man?” 

“Not up to it?” 

“Chocolate stout refers to the color. You don’t put actual chocolate in it.” 

Hardison crossed his arms and smirked, raising a brow in challenge. 

“Fine!” Eliot snarled.

* * *

Joe informed Eliot that Bucky drank for free. “Whatever you say, sir,” Eliot told him. 

Bucky didn’t come back every day, but he was in several days a week. He came in after the lunch rush and he and Joe would sit at the bar and enjoy a beer together, have a bit of lunch. Slowly his story emerged, the fall from the train, Hydra, Russians, blank spaces he didn’t know what to do with and the fear that he could be made to do those things again. 

In return Joe told him about life after The War, Jasmine -

“You seriously shot Bugsy Siegel?” Bucky asked, incredulously. 

“Killed him too. He was a threat to my girl.” 

“No, I don’t blame you, but I might be fanboying a bit.” Bucky’s easy grin was back for a moment and Joe relished it. The lady in red was sitting a few stools down that day. She gave Joe a smirk and a tip of a toast with her sweet tea glass. 

Buck’s smile disappeared when a sandy haired man walked in one day. He stopped right behind Bucky, his gaze lost and longing. Bucky gripped his pint glass tight, but didn’t turn around. 

“Get you something, soldier?” Joe asked. He knew who it was. Who didn’t know Captain America? But he felt protective. 

“I need to talk to my friend.” 

“Should I let this guy bother you or do I throw him out?” 

“I’m not sure you could,” Bucky said, quite seriously. 

“I bet she could,” Joe said, tilting his head toward the lady in red. She smirked. 

“I got it.” Rising, Bucky looked at Steve. “Hey.” His arms came around himself protectively. Joe and Lady in Red both tensed, but the way Steve approached, slowly, no sudden movements, that released a bit of the tension in the room. Not much, but people let go of their hidden weapons. For now. 

Eliot must have felt the room, because he came to stand in the doorway of the kitchen, calmly cleaning his hands on a towel. 

“Can you tell your friends I’m not going to hurt you?” Steve asked. 

“Uh?” Bucky looked around, obviously a little surprised he had friends. “I’m OK,” he told them. “Can Steve and I get beers?” 

Joe nodded and poured Bucky his usual and the latest Hardison experiment for Cap. It involved hyacinth flowers and Joe wasn’t particularly fond of it. He set them down on the bar and pretty much dared Cap to take Bucky away to a table. That made Bucky laugh, short and sharp, which appeared to startle him.

* * *

“Hyacinth flowers?” 

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“In what universe, man?”

* * *

They sat at the bar and tasted their beers. Steve grimaced and slid his away. 

“I kind of wanted to talk to you privately,” Steve said. 

“This is private.” 

Steve glanced around, but seemed to accept this was the best he was going to get. At least Eliot had gone back into the kitchen. “I need your help with something.” 

“I don’t go into the field anymore.” 

“It’s just this -“ 

Bucky turned on his bar stool and looked Steve right in the eye. “No.” 

“You don’t even -“ 

“No.” 

“If I can - “

“No.” 

Joe and the Lady in Red both tensed again. Eliot came back to the door. 

“Steve, I’m not like I used to be. I can’t. I won’t. I am not going to step outside this box because me outside this box is a dangerous thing. It’s a place I don’t like.” 

“The Avengers - “

“No.” 

There was a moment where everything waited, even the air, thick and heavy between them all, settling on their throats like rope squeezed tight. 

“Please, I’m in a serious jam.” 

“I can’t always rescue you.” 

“What do you need?” Lady in Red asked. 

“Ma’am I’m sure you’re very good at ... whatever, but - “ 

“Oh, please.” She looked him up and down. “I’ve faced worse, I’m sure. Just tell me what you need.” 

“How do you feel about aliens?” 

“The space kind or the immigrant kind?” She asked. 

“Space.” 

She shrugged. “Everything dies if you stab it right.” 

“Oookay.” Steve took a deep breath. “I need to fight a bunch of aliens and rescue my friend.”

“An Avenger?” 

“Black Widow.” 

“Oh, I’m in. I so want to ask her out,” Electra exclaimed. “I can do this for you. I’m on my second life, so I probably have seven more. We leave now?” 

“I’m sorry, but what are your qualifications, ma’am?” 

“International assassin, swords specialist, martial arts, and stuff. And I can do all of that backwards and in heels.” 

“Oookay. Well, I suppose we leave now then.” Steve got up and Electra followed him out the door. Because this was Bucky’s life. Joe poured both of them and Eliot a shot. 

“Good job,” Joe said, toasting before downing the whiskey. 

“Yeah?” 

“You gotta hold your ground,” Eliot told him. “You did good.” 

“I can just be a guy who drinks beer and eats good food?” 

“Yeah, yeah you can.” Learning over the bar, Joe clapped Bucky on the shoulder. “You can be that guy just like I can just be a bartender and Eliot can be a chef who saves people on the side.” 

“Very true, sir.” 

The next day, Bucky asked for a job helping out. Eliot offered him one behind the bar, but he said, “I think I’d like to wait tables. I think I’d like to talk to people a little and just be normal.” 

So that’s how Bucky became a waiter, Electra became an Avenger, and Alex Krycek’s bar tab got billed to the FBI.


End file.
